Kathryn Paige Harden

They're responding to really extreme events in their, both their biology and in their upbringing.

And what you see in these communities are actions in which they both are saying,

We're not going to ignore that this happened.

That's not obviously, no one's suggesting that that's on the table, that there's no consequences at all.

But they do, for instance, in the case of Norway, incarcerate them in situations where they have lots of access to mental health treatment.

There's a strong emphasis on rehabilitation.

And there isn't this, again, incredibly harsh, punitive element where it's really about making that person suffer as much as possible.

That's a really radical thing to imagine as an American.

But it is, I think, a really compelling example of how people have maintained cooperative norms while also honoring that this even the perpetrator is also a person.

And this violence didn't come out of nowhere.

They were shaped by so many factors beyond their control.

And I think that that intuition is correct in the sense that, again, we live in a community and our obligation is to protect each other.

We do have responsibilities for each other.

This is where I differ from some other scientists that

think that because behavior is determined by factors beyond our control, it's that science is sort of rendered moral responsibility obsolete.

I don't agree with that.

But I also think that if you look at the conditions of an average American jail or prison right now, you'd be hard pressed to say that the only thing that's happening there is that we're protecting America or American society from perpetrators.

We're also deliberately making people hurt for a very, very long time.

And that retribution is different from how do we keep each other safe?

We have studied children like that in my lab where they show not just aggression, but lack of remorse around it.